WELCOME TO ALL WHO WISH TO LEARN MORE ABOUT WHAT BRITANNIA

& SURROUNDING AREA CAN OFFER TO OUR 55 plus.


Saturday, November 29, 2008

Walking update for 22 Nov walk

This was the weekend of the East Cultural Crawl, an annual event that showcases over 300 local artists and artisans who open their studios to the public for viewing and to market their craft ...

The walking group, consisting of Linda, Flora, Aideen and Virginia stayed close to The Drive ... we visited five studios during the course of the afternoon, the largest one being "Murgatroid" at Napier and Vernon ... this is a three-storey building with a maze of hallways and cross-hallways on all levels ... the studios contained paintings, pottery, jewellery, metal sculptures, art cards, clothing and textiles ...

The most striking art form on display were perfect replicas of the human head and body, complete in every detail including skin pores, skin pigment, moles, creases, eyelashes, fingernails, finger prints and body hair, created by a young man and woman who had extensive training and experience in special effects for movies and television ... every pore was hand imprinted ... every mark and coloration of the skin was put on using a fine hair paint brush ... every brow hair and eyelash was implanted by hand ... the materials used were various: one partial head was done in bronze powder mixed with a bonding agent; another was done in fine fibreglass; a third was rubber surface with fibreglass mesh backing ... the mold for these heads was taken from the artist himself ... the models of heads sold for tens of thousands of dollars and took months to complete ...

The most amazing model was a scaled-down figure of a young man, about three feet tall, with a full head of hair, anatomically correct in every detail, ... at any second, he looked like he could take a breath and blink his eyes, he was so lifelike ... the artists use calipers to calculate the size of each model so the human figures are perfectly proportion whether scaled down or enlarged ... the largest piece was a 600-lb life-sized clay model of a Samurai in the crouched pose of a wrestler facing his opponent and was the foundation from which a final statue would be made ... this would take many months to complete, bringing a price of hundreds of thousands of dollars ...

Another studio contained costumes, drawings and photographs of police riot-squad uniforms, created by a designer trained in clothing design ... these costumes were commissioned by production companies for action movies, theatre and videos ...

By mid-afternoon, we were ready to call it a day and went our separate ways.

Contributor Virginia B

No comments: